Sample Questions
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Related Handouts
- Effective Interviewing Handout (pdf)
- Behavioral Interviews Handout (pdf)
- Interview Questions Handout (pdf)
Related Links
Check out the above video for useful tips on how to answer those difficult behavior based interview questions! For more videos visit our YouTube Page: http://www.youtube.com/user/StPaulCareerCenter
Common Interview Questions
Below are a few common interview questions that give job seekers the most difficulty. For more information see the handouts to the right.
Tell me about yourself.
Walk through your related experiences including academic preparation, jobs and activities-then mention your career goals. Briefly explain how each experience developed skills that relate to the position.
What is a strength you have as it relates to the position?
Be sure to select a strength that is an important part of the job description. Also, this answer will be stronger if you share an example of a time when you used this strength in the past.
What is a weakness you have as it relates to the position?
Don’t pick a strength made to sound like a weakness. Instead, pick something that is a small part of the job that you need to be trained on. Then, highlight all of the skills you DO have that will make this weakness easy for you to overcome.
Behavior Based Interview Questions
Answering behavior based interview questions is where students struggle the most in interviews. These questions force you to give specific examples from your past as part of your answer. Some examples of behavioral questions include:
- Tell me about a time you used creativity to solve a problem.
- Describe your best example of providing excellent customer service.
A thorough answer to a behavior based interview question includes four parts and is known as the "S.T.A.R" technique:
- Situation–Where did the example take place?
- Task–What task did you have to complete?
- Actions–What specific actions did you take to address this task?
Focus on skills! (This is where most of your time should be spent.) - Result–How did things turn out in the end?
Most students do not go into enough detail in the action portion of these answers and forget to add results. We encourage you to have a practice interview to get coaching on this type of interview question.